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The blue-water pelagic ecosystem offshore of southwestern Costa
Rica’s Isla del Caño Biological Reserve and Corcovado National Park took
serious one-two punches during the past few months, and it remains to
be seen whether things will ever return to conditions of the past. The
area around, not inside, the two protected areas is probably Costa
Rica’s most critical dolphin and whale breeding and feeding waters. But
the whales are gone, and the dolphins have changed. The fishing has been
off, and boats are headed elsewhere to find fish.

The first few months of the year shaped up to be one of the
best seasons for marine life in Costa Rican waters in recent memory. The
cool currents of La Niña stoked a profusion of big pelagic species like
dolphins, whales, tuna, turtles and giant mantas. Divers and snorkelers
from the Southern Zone reported more giant mantas seen at Caño Island
in February and March than in the past 15 years put together. Flights
and boats searching for marine life in the area were finding dolphin
superpods, groups of dolphins numbering in the hundreds to thousands,
all over the area. There were many mating and birthing humpback whales, a
large pod of false killer whales, orcas, fin whales and even three blue
whales, including a baby, feeding on giant bait balls of small fish
brought up from the depths during the normal strong upwelling at this
time of year. There were uncountable hectares of turtles, tuna and
billfish. There were even a few big sharks.

Then, a giant foreign
ship showed up and began drilling deep holes in the ocean floor not far
from Caño Island, in the name of scientific research. Within a day, the
whales were gone. Search time for dolphins from a plane went from a half
hour or less to two hours or more. Most dolphin superpods broke into
smaller groups and headed north toward offshore Quepos. Others broke
into smaller groups and moved inshore, closer to the coast. Dolphins
that stayed in the area developed a strange skin rash.

The spewing
ship kept at it for a month. Great areas of waters turned from marine
blue to metallic brown and green. The day after the ship left, a new one
showed up towing many kilometers of giant air guns blasting extremely
loud sounds repetitively. A week later they were still at it. Drake Bay
ecotourism and sportfishing boats foolish enough to still be looking in
their favorite hot spots were told to leave the area by burly men on a
yacht out of Quepos. Scuba divers at Caño Island could hear the giant
booms of the guns during their dives.

No environmental impact
study was done for the area. No dolphin and whale observers were onboard
to look out for cetacean safety. There were no Costa Ricans onboard
until someone noticed. Many questions were never answered. No notice was
given to area residents of what was going to happen.

Since the
drilling, no whales have been reported in the area – the longest period
without whale sightings that anglers and guides in Drake Bay can
remember. No large dolphin superpods have been seen. The fishing is bad.
No wonder so few tourists seem to want to visit the area right now.

This
serious lack of ocean oversight has left locals wondering what is next.
There are reports of making a permanent drilling riser here and of
laying an undersea cable from the mainland to Caño Island and then
offshore to the rig.

Let’s hope an environmental impact study is
involved and that locals dependent on the area’s marine life are given
some notice so they can find new jobs. Because what’s next could be the
knockout punch for a good chunk of Costa Rica’s famous marine life:
whales, dolphins, turtles – and fishers and divers.

Email costacetacea@gmail.com with contributions to The Big Blue, or check out www.costacetacea.com for more information.

Check out this very informative article by Nora M. and O about gold on the Osa that was published the day after our last blog post about gold in the ocean offshore of Osa, Costa Rica. Guess Crocodile Bay is pretty well informed about gold on the Osa. Except they left out any underwater history. We are hoping for another post about the history of gold on the Osa underwater from these gold experts.

Future
offshore Osa gold mining or other drilling might cause denizens even
bigger problems. Offshore Osa likely has a lot of gold.
The worlds first offshore gold mining operation was off of Sirena, in
Corcovado National Park. Since the park is protected a measley
500 meters offshore, seems like someone might have been thinking
about big gold in the deep blue sea of the Osa peninsula.

Recent research on Hawaiian spinner
dolphins indicates that they need protected times and places.
Surprise! One bay is visited by as many as sixty swimmers at a time
who try to play with a small group of dolphins. Seems the dolphins
rest in the early daylight hours, and that’s when many swimmer
tourists head out. Less dolphins may come into the bay and the
dolphins might leave earlier than usual when too many people show up.
Spinners in Hawaii rest in small groups near shore in shallow sandy
bays near deep water. Scientists say these places need protection.
Clearly tourists should be told to leave the dolphins alone in the
early daylight hours and fishing and extraction should be stopped in
the bays. Costa Rican dolphins should have it so good.

Costa Rican spinner dolphins deal with
giant nets towed by ships, helicopters dropping bombs, long lines
full of hooks, shrimp trawlers bulldozing the bottom, surprise drill
ships making a big mess, big banging seismic surveys, cargo ships
blitzing by, sport fishers plowing through the pod with lines and
hooks, tourist boats gawking, and even some divers in the water. How
do you think that effects their beauty sleep?

Don't forget here in Costa Rica spinner
dolphins have no protected place at all.

Costa Rican spinner and spotted
dolphins, who also rest in the early daylight, need tourists to leave
them alone at this time. Sport fishing boats need to stop fishing in
the dolphins as they particularly like the early hours of the day.
Many hotel managers want tours to leave early to get everyone out of
the hotel, but this is the wrong strategy if you are concerned about
dolphins. Tourist operators like divers and fishers should put up on
their web pages that they leave the dolphins alone in the am. Guests
of Costa Cetacea over the years will recall that all tours leave late
and respect the dolphins rest time, much to the frustration of some
hotel managers. The interactions here in Costa Rica are much more
interesting in the PM anyway.

Aloha to the Hawaiians for once again
being the world ocean leaders. Lets hope Costa Rica follows.

Oceanic Farming Is Wave of the Future

Costa Rica’s biggest and most bioproductive ecosystem, the
offshore open-ocean pelagic, could be a shining blue diamond of economic
productivity with a little management fertilizer.

Of course,
pelagic or deep-sea fishing already provides big money, but many who
have studied the situation think sustainability is being left out of the
equation. Will Costa Rica’s oceans collapse like a tree stripped of
leaves and fruit, or will it bloom for generations?

Ocean parks,
refuges, sanctuaries and biological corridors clearly are part of any
blue future. Costa Rica has demonstrated to the world the economic value
of green protected areas, and hopefully we will follow our own lesson
with our marine resources.

But parks are not all the future holds
for our oceans. If history is any indicator, oceanic farming will become
even bigger than the terrestrial kind. The soil of the future is the
ocean.

If we know anything about the future, it’s that it will be
hungry. By many estimates, more then half the world’s seafood is already
farmed. And more than half the world’s fisheries have collapsed.

The
future of open-ocean permaculture will be very different from the first
crude attempts at ocean monoculture. As farmers around the world go
green – meaning organic and sustainable – by demand, blue farmers get
the advantage of being able to start off that way. Companies like Kona
Blue Water Farms are already leading the way in sustainable seafood
production. Blue farmers could literally save the world.

Future blue farms might be more like Indian milpas
than monoculture banana plantations: multiple useful species growing in
synergistic harmony, tended to by nearby local communities.

Imagine
a giant shining blue diamond, bigger than your house, far offshore, out
of sight of land – a giant diamond in the sea, half submerged. A pole
runs from top to bottom. The sides of the diamond are made of a mesh
that keeps fish in but lets water pass through. The waste from the fish
feeds strings of shellfish around the bottom of the diamond. Algae and
other life growing on the shellfish bring in a cloud of little fish that
surround the diamond. Small holes in the mesh let the little fish dart
through, feeding the big fish. And the big fish are harvested as needed.

Permaculture.

Local
communities and businesses could tend their own, local blue diamonds.
Other diamonds could be released offshore near the northern or southern
border. With currents, nature and technology doing the work, the
diamonds would get harvested at the other end of the country, full of
fat fish. Sportfishers would increase their catches around the massive
fish-attracting devices, divers and snorkelers would go below for a
look, boats and kayakers would want to go around, guides would be
needed, and even more money and livelihoods would be made.

Perhaps
we could help lead the way to the future of blue farming, applying the
age-old principles of permaculture and sustainability. Many cultures
have sustainably harvested shallow coastal waters since ancient times.
Now is the time to take it farther offshore and farm, as well as
conserve, the big blue.

‘Pelagic Park’ Would Help Save Spinner Dolphins

From The Tico Times, Posted: Friday, September 05, 2008 - By Shawn Larkin

The most hightech, large-scale fishing in Costa Rica’s oceans is commercial tuna fishing.

From hardworking crew and helicopters to radar and satellites, these operations take catching fish very seriously.

They
drop enormous nets bigger than a city block into the sea to catch vast
quantities of an assortment of marine life. They are after mostly tuna,
among the most valuable fish of any denizens of the deep.

When
fishing boats find a big group of spinner dolphins, they find some of
their ever-present sidekicks: giant yellowfin and bigeye tuna. Mostly
seen only below the surface, the tuna would not be so easy to locate
without the help of the dolphins, which must surface regularly to
breathe. The giant tuna pack together around the dolphins that find
their food for them. Here, offshore of southern Costa Rica’s Osa Peninsula, the big tuna and the spinner dolphins are always together.

I reckon the dolphins think: “Now that the moon
is full, the current is from the southwest at two knots and the wind is
calm, a bigspaced swell is coming in from west-southwest, it rained
last night and the layers of water temperatures changed a lot, it’s a
sunny day, almost high noon, and I think I know where all those other
dolphins are going, and the orcas will not hunt today, and the tuna
boats will be busy for a few hours – hope my friends and family make it
out! – we should go hunt the south end of the Osa drop-off upwelling.”

And I reckon the tuna are thinking just one thing: “Follow the dolphins.”

Follow
the dolphins. Just as the seabirds, the sailfish and the marlin, the
sharks and the whales, the sportfishing captains and the commercial
tuna-fishing fleets do. Follow the dolphins; they have the best
actionable ocean intelligence. The dolphins have the network. They are
always with the food.

In the Osa drop-off upwelling,
where dense, cooler and nutrient-rich water is pushed toward the ocean
surface, the tuna, birds and other marine life are nearly always with
the dolphins. All a commercial fishing fleet has to do is find the birds
on a special radar, send up a helicopter or two to check it out and
call in coordinates, start corralling the dolphins with the helicopter
and explosives dropped from the helicopter, put down small, fast chase
boats to further corral the dolphins, use the ship to corral the
dolphins even more, and then put down a very big net around the dolphins
and associated marine life with the help of a special net boat.

If you do this, you get a lot of tuna in the net below the dolphins, and it’s worth a lot of money.

Sadly,
this kind of bonanza is unsustainable. The longer-lived, more slowly
reproducing spinners will probably die out before the tuna are
exhausted, perhaps giving the tuna a chance to recuperate, because once
the dolphins are gone, no one will be able to find the tuna. But how
will the tuna find food without the dolphins?

Fishing
industry insiders have told me that dozens of spinner dolphins are
killed every day by busy boats. They die most frequently when their
narrow, smiling mouths get stuck in the holes of the nets. Hundreds more
must be manhandled by diving crews and thrown out of the nets daily,
lest the nets are damaged.

Other Osa dolphin
species, such as bottlenose and spotted dolphins, are somewhat likelier
to swim out if a small piece of one end of the net is put down for a
while, a procedure known as a “backdown.”

Backdowns do not help Osa’s spinner dolphins, however; they stay in the net.

Tuna fishermen say the spinners are tontos,
stupid, because they do not swim away from the ship and out of the net.
They seem unable to stop surfing the ship’s waves. The same trait the
tourist boats love dooms the poor spinners.

Time for ‘Pelagic Park’

The blue-water pelagic (open-ocean) ecosystem domain of the Osa’s spinner dolphins is probably the most productive ecosystem in Costa Rica,
perhaps in the tropical marine world. According to former members of
Jacques Cousteau’s legendary conservation ship, Calypso, and the BBC’s
top “Blue Planet” underwater cameramen, offshore Osa is the richest
tropical blue water they have seen anywhere on the planet (see sidebar).

The
dolphins’ domain is an area between five and 20 nautical miles from
Caño Island Biological Reserve. The reserve’s waters currently extend
only about two nautical miles; this is not enough to protect large
animals such as dolphins and tuna. To protect large marine animals, you
need a Corcovado or Amistad-sized park at sea.

For
many years, around the world, protected marine areas have proven to
increase catches in surrounding areas. With a big enough pelagic park,
or better still, parks and corridors, tuna-fishing boats could make
money in the long term, not just short.

An astounding number of big, amazing animals
live in the Osa drop-off upwelling area and would be protected along
with the spinners. Fin, sei, Bryde’s, humpback and blue whales and orcas
frequent this little upwelling. Sailfish, marlin, tuna, manta rays,
whale sharks, turtles, beaked whales, pilot whales, pseudorcas,
bottlenose dolphins and spotted dolphins are found here in some of the
highest concentrations in the world.

A special area of the Osa drop-off upwelling, the clearest waters in Costa Rica,
would be an excellent place to prohibit commercial fishing, save the
spinners and allow boaters and divers to see and snorkel with dolphins
and other amazing marine life in the big blue.

Many people in Costa Rica,
including yours truly, already benefit greatly from tourists visiting
the giant dolphin pods and other marine life congregations off the Osa.
But the commercial fishing fleet will end it soon for us all if some
sort of pelagic park is not created.

The spinners
are dying. There seem to be a lot fewer little spinners now then there
were in the past. The pods no longer stretch to the horizon in every
direction.

A park is the only solution. Just as Costa Rica
has demonstrated to the world the value of protecting functioning
terrestrial ecosystems, we can show the world the same goes for the
ocean. Costa Rica needs to make peace with the ocean as well as the rain forest. It’s time to set aside a meaningful, not miniscule, part of Costa Rica’s biggest ecosystem: the open ocean.

The voice of the vast majority of ocean users is heard and they are not catch and release billfishers.

Fishers should always have access to most of the worlds oceans, not
just for sport but to eat! But the world does need some places in the
ocean to be free of nets and lines. Catching and releasing endangered billfish is not sport fishing and not as many people do it as some would have you think.

The crazy well funded, massivly sponsered, internationally super influencial Billfish Foundation took a big wave over the bow when the Prime Minister of Australia,
backed by the people of one of the most ocean savy nations on earth,
said our oceans are for a lot more than just catch and release
billfishing. The Billfish Foundation has waged a campaign against marine
protected areas, encouraging members to come out and help stop creation
of marine protected areas

Latin America's greatest ocean hero, Laura Chinchilla, granted future
Costa Ricans a much better chance of sustainably utilizing our Oceans
into the future. The sad free for all of too powerful special interests
will now be controlled with vision directed to the people and the
future by a new Vice Minister of Aguas and Mares. Wow! No thats how
you do it! Seems now the voices of all groups of ocean users, not just
the most connected screaming special interests, will have a say. Now is
time for Costa Ricans to speak up about what they know about our
oceans, and help conserve it. Have you heard about the largest dolphin
pod in the world, the spinner dolphins of the Osa peninsula and Cano
Island? Aaaa, happens to be they need a park! They live near to famous
protected areas Corcovado National Park and Cano Island Biological
Reserve, BUT, they live in waters attacked by nets and lines. This Park
or protected area, needs to be south and west of Cano Island to at
least a distance of 30 nautical miles to help these spinners. NOT just 8
miles from the island as some are saying! 8 miles is not enough to
protect the biggest dolphin pod in the world and Golfito and Puerto
Jimenez need to make a lot money in the long run from conserving these
dolphins, not killing them for short term collapsing profits.